2 million to be hit with extra tax payments while 3.5 million receive rebates

18/05/2013

Getty Images

It’s that time of year again. Glamorous, heart-warming, and sort of like Christmas but with even more suicides. Yes, it’s time for a letter from the taxman. Who is sort of like Santa but slightly more of a jobsworth.

Anyway – according to that well known resistor of panic and voice of reason, the Daily Mail, ‘around two million pensioners and workers are to be hit with shock tax bills of around £500.’ Notice pensioners were right up there. It’s just more hysterical to think of starving, freezing old people keeling over in ‘shock’ than some 28 year old marketing director. But anyway

The reality is that HMRC - that bastion of virtue that assiduously pursues poor people while gleefully tucking into the lobster with huge tax avoiding corporations has released figures about the number of shortfalls and rebates this year. Two million people who thought they’d ‘settled up proper gu’vnor’ are to be stung for an extra wedge of cash

However, pulling popularity out of the bag, HMRC are also going to be firing off 3.5million letters informing their recipients that instead of spending the summer on the Daily mail’s latest ‘Gruel Diet’, they can get themselves straight down the pub and tuck into the faux Thai menu and get some drinks with umbrellas in as they will be receiving a rebate.

Elaine Clark, founder of the accountancy firm Cheap Accounting (wow – it sounds like the Aldi of finance), said: ‘It’s very hard on people who have budgeted carefully through the year and done their best to stay on top of the finances, to suddenly discover they owe tax through no fault of their own.

‘Understanding your tax is almost impossible for most ordinary people. No matter how diligent you are things can go wrong.

‘What people need to remember that if it’s not their fault and their employer or pension company has made a mistake, then they can fight these bills.’